On the first day of the federal government’s second attempt to convict Roger Clemens of perjury and other assorted crimes relating to his alleged use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, Clemens’ lawyer put on a show that was pure foreshadowing genius.

Rusty Hardin turned up the wattage on his folksy country fried charm, pulling smiles out of potential jurors with pertinent questions such as whether they liked Texans. The drawl on that last word was forged of a hotter fire, dripping with statehood pride from a 10-gallon mouth.

It was a relevant query, considering the defendant’s legal team seems bent on convincing those who are eventually picked from the pool that this is a trial about powerful and bumbling government suits picking on a simple citizen who might have inadvertently mumbled something that wasn’t quite true.

And you know what? Hardin might get away with it. Assuming Justice Department lawyers don’t again trip over their cuffs, here’s the defense that might keep one of baseball’s greatest pitchers from serving a year or two in prison.

Those of us who covered Clemens for years and years could attest to the notion that putting together sensible sentences was buried deep on his skill list. He was brilliant with the brushback pitch, his split-finger fastballs made knees weak, but off the mound, when faced with microphones, his control often went awry.

So according to witnesses tucked inside the Washington courtroom Monday, as jury selection rolled on, Hardin cleverly posed this: Is it possible for someone to say something without realizing it’s not exactly true? He pointedly noted that Clemens is charged with making an intentionally false statement, which isn’t the same as “lying.”

Look, if this divided country can agree on anything, it’s that we’re weary and possibly disgusted with the government chasing (mostly in vain) after professional athletes who willingly stuff their bodies with illegal substances in order to get the bigger contract, the fame, the girls, whatever.

Our elected officials have better things to do with taxpayers’ money—that’s a statement most of us can universally applaud.

But that genie flew awry years ago when commissioner Bud Selig hired his buddy George Mitchell, a former U.S. senator, to “investigate” baseball players who might have used illegal PEDs, and that genie is now a full-blown raging witch with backne and an oddly shaped caveman forehead who can’t be shoved back into the bottle.

It’s fashionable to moan that prosecuting Clemens for not being truthful about his alleged use of steroids or human growth hormone during his 24-season career is as wasteful as spending gazillions to try Barry Bonds. So what’s the solution? Do we allow people to perjure themselves in front of Congress or in court because it’s too expensive to do anything when someone gives the finger to the basic foundation of our justice system?

The fact that the prosecution has fattened its coffers after the last debacle—going from two lawyers to five, according to The Associated Press—makes this trial more absurdly obscene. But isn’t it still more palatable than the idea that individuals can get away with saying whatever comes to their jumbled or criminal minds after swearing to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth? We learn in fifth grade that our justice system is the best in the universe because of that premise—raise your right hand, etc.—and not even celebrity or wealth should get a pass.

Arguing that grown adults should be able to use illegal steroids or human growth hormone however they see fit is specious, because it creates an untenable and unfair environment for the many athletes who’d rather not risk their health. Arguing that the government doesn't deserve a second chance after blowing its shot at wrangling Clemens last year by presenting evidence to the court previously deemed inadmissible, thus forcing a mistrial in just the second day of testimony—well, that’s perfectly reasonable.

But for motives that seem more to do with pride and showing who’s got the biggest satchel, here we are, back in a dank courtroom as Hardin, the attorney from Houston who looks as if he cranks Waylon Jennings in his pickup truck, captivates them D.C. city folk. Already the prosecution has complained that his down-home ways are wasting the court’s time. He wears wrinkled tan suits, so as not to appear too lawyerly.

Besides hinting that his client didn’t knowingly mislead congress during his 2008 testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Hardin and his defense team appear to want to sneak in the suggestion that those landmark drugs-and-sports hearings on Capitol Hill weren’t legitimate. Clemens is charged with 15 counts of obstructing Congress, making false statements and committing perjury in both a public hearing and in a deposition.

Watch for his aw shucks, perennially mangled use of the Queen’s English personality to be part of his defense. Watch for prosecutors to call as witnesses against Clemens his former teammates—Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch, Mike Stanton, Jose Canseco—and for the trial to last four to six weeks, assuming the Justice Department doesn’t act again as if it just fell off the watermelon truck. That trial nine months ago was like Little Leaguers swinging against, well, the Yankees.

This is the part where Yankee fans scream about Mitchell, the venerable former senator from Maine, being a fan of the Red Sox, and everyone nods and agrees that the Mitchell Report was hardly comprehensive because it barely flicked the knuckles of Selig or anyone in Fenway’s home dugout.

If the Justice Department or the defense’s big hats dare call to the stand Mitchell or Selig, Clemens could sit on the fence and the birds would feed him, as Hardin might say. But that doesn’t seem likely. Instead Clemens’ defense will hope to convince the jury his crime is speaking 10 words a second, with gusts to 30, or maybe that he’s overdrawn at the memory bank. Brian McNamee, Clemens' former personal trainer, will be brutally scrutinized, along with the syringes, gauze pads and tissues McNamee says he kept after injecting the pitcher with steroids and hGH in 2001.

Yep, America, this is your tax dollars on drugs. The genie’s out, and she looks like 10 miles of bad road.